Educational
The library needs of all these educational institutions are similar. It has been said that there are three classes to be considered,—professors, graduate or advanced students, and undergraduates.
The ordinary youthful students do not get much time for general reading and do not need unrestricted access to all the shelves. If they can get at general and special reference books, their own text-books, and the books recommended by their instructors, it is all they want.
The professors and teachers, however, and to a certain extent advanced students, may wish to browse anywhere, and can be trusted to go anywhere. They want facilities for examining and selecting books in the stacks, they want quiet rooms to take books to (perhaps several books) where they can read, copy and write.
The professors want department and “seminar” rooms, shelved sometimes for permanent sub-libraries of their own technical books, always for books of present use in their daily classes. They also like to have individual rooms for study, and for their records.
The relation of these rooms to the general library is the peculiar and pressing problem of scholastic library building. Dr. Canfield said that the question, shall departmental libraries be included in the building of the general library? has not two sides, but a dozen.
School Libraries. These should not perhaps be treated here, as they rarely, perhaps never, have separate buildings. But as schools rise in grade, or are grouped in large buildings, their libraries may attain size and individual character, and the rooms assigned to them need careful planning. Good light first, with cheerful aspect; an accessible central position; wall shelving, combined perhaps with shallow alcoves opposite windows; spaces and tables for teachers and for scholars of different grades; a central space for general reference books, an attendant, and what passing to and fro is necessary; as good artificial light as the classrooms,—these would seem obvious desiderata.
College. Colleges and universities vary little except in size, and perhaps in the proportion advanced investigation and large departments bear to prescribed undergraduate study.
Rather open stacks, with carrels, would be preferable in a college; a good general reading room, or a suite of rooms slightly differentiated; nooks and private desks, with a private room or rooms for professors; wall shelving in professors’, class or seminar rooms, with shallow alcoves or floor cases at end of rooms for possibilities of enlargement.